Memories app not indexing photos (Formerly: Android Nextcloud app 3.32.2 not auto-uploading photos)

[schwad]

I’m having a problem with the Android app uploading photos to my self-hosted Nextcloud instance.

Summary: It formerly worked, stopped working a few weeks ago, then I made it work again by changing a setting in Android, and now it’s stopped working again for a different reason.

Details of the current problem:
Nextcloud snap version 31.0.7snap1 ; hosted on personal computer running Debian 12

• photos should be uploaded to the folder: /InstantUpload/Camera/
• older photos have been uploaded there automatically

Android app: Nextcloud 3.32.2 (July 18, 2025)

• In the Nextcloud Android app, the Uploads list (found in the pull-in bar from left of screen) shows the files that should be uploaded.
• There are files that are not uploaded listed there, with their locations listed as /InstantUpload/Camera.
  • This implies (to me) that the Nextcloud app thinks that it has uploaded those files to the server. But they are not present on the server, as seen through the web interface.

Android app: Nextcloud Memories version 1.12

• clearly shows that the photos in question are not uploaded
  • they have a “cloud” icon that has a slash through it
  • photos that have been uploaded to the server are shown without this symbol

Older problem that was already fixed:
A few weeks ago I had a different problem, which I fixed. In the Nextcloud Android app, the Upload list had files marked as “local file not found”. Those files were not being uploaded to the server. I found the resolution to this problem here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NextCloud/comments/1lu2ba7/comment/n1vg29t/
I went to Android OS settings > Apps > Special app access > All files access, and enabled it for the Nextcloud app (version 3.32.2). That fixed the problem at the time.

The advice here is identical:

Auto Upload of Photos Not Working Since Nextcloud Android App v3

Since updating to Nextcloud Android App version 3.32, the automatic upload of photos to my Nextcloud server has stopped working. In the previous version, everything worked flawlessly. I tested this issue on two devices: Moto G53 (Android 13) and Moto G85 (Android 15), both running Android. The problem occurs on both devices. Please advise if there is a known issue or a workaround for this. Server Nextcloud ver. [Nextcloud Hub 10] (31.0.6) Thank you.

My current problem is different.

Why does the Nextcloud Android app think the files are uploaded (listing the location /InstantUpload/Camera/) when they are not uploaded?

[schwad]

Nevermind…

The files were uploaded to Nextcloud. They were visible through the Nextcloud web interface, under Files > InstantUploads > Camera.

They were not displaying in Memories (not at all in the web interface) because of an indexing problem. This was seemingly caused by the exiftool utility failing to run.

I fixed this by going to the Memories configuration (in the web interface) and enabling “Use system perl (only if exiftool binary does not work)”. I was then able to run the Memories indexer manually from the command line:
sudo /snap/bin/nextcloud.occ memories:index
and the photos showed up in Memories.

We’ll see if the indexing service is capable of running automatically, with this configuration.

I still don’t know why the exiftool binary was failing to run. There was a file at the exiftool path specified in the Memories configuration:
/var/snap/nextcloud/current/nextcloud/extra-apps/memories/bin-ext/exiftool-amd64-glibc
But when I tried to run the indexing service manually (before enabling the “use system perl” option) the error message I got was:
failed to run exiftool: /tmp/exiftool-oc840z7jmuum-13.30-f59590f4
There was nothing at that path. Why was the Memories indexer looking there for the exiftool binary, when the Memories configuration said to look elsewhere?

If anyone can answer that, please let me know.